Turns out $16 muffins invoiced by the Capital Hilton in Washington, D.C. for a 2009 Department of Justice conference is disputed by Hilton Worldwide. The global hotel company responded to the public outrage over exorbitant muffin charges that has been coined as “Muffin-gate“.

The muffin-gate story was fueled by hundreds of reports that the invoice for an August 2009 conference of the Executive Office for Immigration Review at the Capital Hilton in Washington D.C. showed a line item charge of $4,200 for 250 muffins.

The Obama administration has ordered all agencies to review conference-related spending.

Hilton’s response to Muffin-Gate.

The $16 muffin price tag or $4,200 invoiced by the Capital Hilton actually covered 250 muffins, 15 gallons of coffee, 30 gallons of ice tea, and 200 pieces of fruit for 534 people attending the conference.

Has Anderson Cooper never ordered hotel room service?

When I first saw this muffin story last week spreading across the airwaves I chuckled hearing high-profile millionaire TV anchors on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC and people like Jon Stewart exclaiming they can’t imagine a $16 muffin.

Give me a break!

Room Service Prices

I can count the times I have ordered hotel room service on one hand.

Here are typical room service menu prices for an upper upscale hotel. This example is taken from a Hyatt Regency room service menu in Columbus, Ohio. I think these rates are actually lower than your average hotel in D.C., Los Angeles, Boston, and New York.

• White toast $2.75
• Cold Cereal with fruit $5.00
• Orange juice $3.00
• The price for cold cereal, orange juice and toast is $10.75.

All Room Service Orders are subject to State and Local Taxes, a Delivery Charge of $3.00, and a Service Charge of 20%. The Service Charge Includes Gratuity.

• $10.75 food order
• $3.00 Delivery charge
• $2.15 service charge (mandatory tip)
• $2.66 (Ohio 6.75  state tax + 10% hotel tax  = $2.66)

Grand total for room service lite breakfast = $18.56 for a bowl of cereal, toast and a glass of OJ.

I am assuming there is a coffee maker and complimentary coffee in the room.

Share your Room Service story

I have photographed several room service menus during my hotel stays and I tried to find more examples of room service rates in my hotel photo collection. I couldn’t locate any for this post. I remember paying $11 for a glass of milk when a friend and her young boy stopped by my room at Le Meridien San Francisco  a few years back.

Readers – please share some examples of room service rates from your travels.

 

 

 

 

 

The Truckee River is a place I swam on sweltering summer days in the middle of the city of Reno as a teenager. Paiute Indian friends took me camping a couple of times in large boulder outcrops hundreds of yards from the shore around Pyramid Lake, the Great Basin desert sink where the Truckee River terminates at the end of its journey down the Sierras from Lake Tahoe.

There was little recognition happening when I drove by places where I think I once lived in Reno, Nevada. Freeways, shopping malls, and new business parks did nothing to stir memories of places from when I lived in the ‘biggest little city in the world’ for a few months in 1978.

Water was a running theme of my summer road trip from Monterey to Denver. Sitting in bed at the Holiday Inn Reno Sparks with a AAA Guidebook and Maps and Google to look up highway drive reviews aided my search for the most desirable route across the Sierra Nevada for our trip home.

Interstate 80 and U.S. Highway 50 around Lake Tahoe both lead to Sacramento. We really did not want to drive through Sacramento on our way back to Monterey. Besides, U.S. Highway 50 and Interstate 80 are the only roads I had driven across the Sierra Nevada prior to driving Tioga Pass Road in Yosemite National Park for the outbound route to Denver on this road trip.

I wanted to drive one of the other Sierra Nevada road crossings. There are very few roads crossing the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California over its 400 miles north-south range and 70 miles in width. The southern end of the range has Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the lower 48 states at 14,505 ft.

Heading out of the Holiday Inn Reno-Sparks

Driving from Reno south are three paved, mostly two-lane state highways crossing the Sierra Nevada Mountains between Lake Tahoe and Yosemite National Park with California Highways 88, 4 and 108. Every east-west road has a summit pass and they are all high elevation and relative to each other are higher the farther south you go to cross the mountain range.

There is nearly a 200 mile stretch of mountains in the southern portion of the Sierra Nevada Mountains where no east-west roads cross the range between Highway 120 Tioga Pass at Yosemite National Park and Highway 178 Walker Pass by Lake Isabella northeast of Bakersfield where the highway crosses near the southern end of the range. Kings Canyon National Park offers a road deep into the western canyons of the Sierra Nevada in the middle of this wilderness and I described the Highway 180 drive last May.

North to South Sierra Nevada Highway Crossings

• Interstate 80 – Donner Summit = 7,259 ft.
• U.S. Highway 50 – Echo Summit = 7,377 ft.
• California State Highway 88 – Kit Carson Pass Highway = 8,573 ft.
• California State Highway 4 – Ebbits Pass Highway = 8,730 ft.
• California State Highway 108 – Sonora Pass Highway = 9,624 ft.
• California State Highway 120 – Tioga Pass Yosemite N.P. = 9,945 ft.
• California State Highway 178 – Walker Pass – 5,250 ft.
• California State Highway 58 – Tehachapi Pass – 4,065 ft. (route to Las Vegas from central California)

The mountain passes increase in elevation heading south with no roads over the high mountains in the southern portion of the Sierra Nevada range south of Yosemite. Here is a map showing only Sierra Nevada highway roads. Walker Pass and Tehachapi Pass are the southern end of the Sierra Nevada.

 

Highway 88 – Kit Carson Pass Highway

The Sierra Nevada physical geography is a gradual rise from the central valley of California to foothills and mountains from west to east. The highest peaks in the eastern portion of the range suddenly drop off into the Great Basin desert of eastern California and Nevada. The geological landscape of the Sierra Nevada creates unique weather conditions resulting in huge snowfall amounts in winter and strong wind currents year round.

The strong wind currents create ideal glider thermal soaring conditions in the area south of Carson City. Barron Hilton, grandfather of Paris Hilton and son of Hilton hotel chain founder Conrad Hilton owns the Flying M Ranch in Nevada. The ranch is a popular location for glider competitions and located about 60 miles south of Reno with its own airfield.

Steve Fossett took off from the Flying M Ranch the day he died in a 2007 solo crash about 65 miles south of the Nevada ranch and five miles west of Mammoth Lakes, California. A documentary I saw on the accident investigation showed extreme wind conditions were likely the cause of the crash in the high mountains of the Sierra Nevada.

 

Who was Kit Carson and why is a mountain pass in California named after him?

Seeing the name of Kit Carson got me wondering what the guy was doing in California. Carson River was one of the main water routes into the Sierra Nevada along the California Trail that pioneers reached after crossing the Forty Mile Desert from the Humboldt River that flows east to west in Nevada.

Wikipedia is my friend.

Christopher Houston “Kit” Carson truly was a legend in his own time. He was born in Kentucky in 1809 as the eleventh child of his father and the family moved to Missouri when he was one year old. They purchased land from Daniel Boone’s son. Kit’s father died when he was eight and he was apprenticed to a saddle maker at the age of 14 in Franklin, Missouri on the north bank of the Missouri River.

Franklin, Missouri’s location was the terminus of the newly created Santa Fe Trail used as a trade route between the United States and Mexico. The Santa Fe Trail followed the Arkansas and Cimarron Rivers across present-day Kansas and Colorado through Comanche Indian territory to reach Santa Fe, Mexico at that time and now present-day New Mexico.

Kit Carson signed on to tend livestock with a caravan heading to Santa Fe when he was 16 and stayed in Taos. In his twenties Kit lived the wild west mountain man life as a fur trapper/trader traveling across much of the western U.S. including Arizona and as far west as Sacramento, California and north into Montana and Idaho. He learned to speak Spanish and several Native American tribal dialects. Throughout the 1830s he trapped beaver throughout the western U.S. from Idaho to Colorado until the beaver became scarce and the economy hit recession reducing beaver pelt value.

In 1842 Kit Carson met John Fremont, son-in-law of Missouri U.S. Senator Thomas Hart Benton. Fremont worked with the Corps of Topographical Engineers and had spent several years mapping the Mississippi, Missouri and Des Moines Rivers. Fremont needed a guide for an expedition into the South Park region of the Colorado Rocky Mountains and searching the source of the Arkansas River. My Loyalty Traveler post ‘Driving by the 14ers South Park to Aspen, Colorado‘ has pictures and a description of Colorado’s South Park.

The five-month journey into the Colorado Rocky Mountains was written up by Jessie Benton Fremont, wife of John Fremont. From what I have read, Jessie Benton Fremont was the woman who elevated John Fremont’s political standing as her writing of her husband’s travels is what Congress received as John Fremont’s American West exploration reports.

Fremont received another commission to explore the American West for territorial expansion and with Kit Carson as guide they explored the Sierra Nevada of California and Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest as far as Washington state from 1842 to 1846.

Jessie Benton Fremont’s Congressional reports made the two men national heroes.

Fremont’s reports were published by Congress and used as guides for the emigrant migration west in the 1840s and the routes to California during the Gold Rush era.

Kit Carson Pass on what is now Highway 88 in California was mapped in 1844 when John Fremont and Kit Carson attempted a winter crossing of the Sierra Nevada in February against the advice of local Indians. Fremont is reported to be the first white to see Lake Tahoe. The party successfully crossed the Sierra Nevada in about five weeks over what is now called Kit Carson Pass reaching Sutter’s Fort near Sacramento in early March 1844 with no loss of members from the exploration party. In 1849 Mormons heading back to Utah from California built a trail across Carson Pass. This route was the most traversed route across the Sierra Nevada during the California Gold Rush.

John Fremont headed out to California in 1845 and helped initiate the Mexican-American War of 1846 in California by establishing a camp with an American flag on a mountain peak overlooking Monterey Bay and Monterey, which at the time was the Mexican political capital of Alta California.

Fremont was evicted and headed north to Oregon Territory, but soon returned after the war officially started and as a lieutinent colonel in the California Battalion he led assualts on San Diego and Los Angeles.

Kit Carson was dispatched east to report the conquest of California by Fremont and Commodore Stockton to Washington D.C. In New Mexico Carson met General Kearney who ordered Kit Carson to lead his army unit across Arizona and back to San Diego, California. The Mexicans had recaptured San Diego and Los Angeles and Kearney’s unit helped recapture these towns for the Americans and end the war in California.

The Treaty of Cahuenga in January 1847 ended the California war and Fremont was appointed military governor of California by Commodore Stockton.

Kit Carson, having never made it past Taos, New Mexico the year before, was sent back to Washington, D.C. a second time to report the conquest of California to Congress and the President. He made it to D.C. and after briefing political leaders Carson was ordered back to California. The guy earned a lot of frequent rider miles before settling in Taos, New Mexico in 1849.

Fremont refused to turn authority over to General Stephen Watts Kearney in 1847 who was officially designated Governor of California by President Polk and the War Secretary. Fremont was eventually arrested and court martialed. President Polk commuted the sentence to a dishonorable discharge from miltary service. Fremont returned to California, settling near Mariposa and he was elected as one of the first two senators in California.

In 1856 John Fremont was the first presidential candidate of the Republican Party running on the anti-slavery and manifest destiny platform of ”Free Soil, Free Men and Fremont.” The election of anti-slavery candidate John Fremont could have sparked the Civil War. Senator Benton, Fremont’s father-in-law and a powerful Democratic Party leader backed James Buchanan who won the Presidential election of 1856. Four years later Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln, who lost in his bid to be the Vice Presidential candidate on the Fremont 1856 ticket, was elected U.S. President and the Civil War ensued.

History lesson over.

There is far more historical information than travel information in this post. I found it interesting upon returning home to read how these historical figures played major roles in the places I drove all across the western states on this trip from Monterey to Denver.

This road trip helped me connect geography with political history in California and the western states. Road tripping gives a person plenty of time to observe and think.

Brokeass Mountain Road Trip, July 2011

Monterey, California – Denver, Colorado

• Yosemite’s Tioga Pass Road across the Sierra Nevada Mountains
• Westin Monache Resort Mammoth for year round vacations
• Even Lonelier than the Loneliest Road in America
• Earth’s Oldest Trees in Great Basin National Park Nevada
• Less extreme than 127 Hours in Utah
• Brokeass Mountain Tour eastbound – Hotel Value at High Elevation
• Brokeass Mountain Tour visits Starwood in Denver
• Driving by the 14ers South Park to Aspen, Colorado
• Top of the Rockies on the High Road to Aspen – Independence Pass 12,095 feet.
• St. Regis Aspen – Too Late to Cancel
• Aspen, Colorado to Park City, Utah: Ghost lands of Buffalo Soldiers, Utes and Dinosaurs
• The California Trail across Nevada
• Homeward Bound – Carson Pass Highway 88 over the Sierra Nevada to Monterey

 

Starwood Preferred Guest has announced a new member benefit effective October 1, 2011 SPG award stays and nights count for elite status qualification toward the calendar year requirement of 10 stays or 25 nights for SPG Gold elite membership and 25 stays or 50 nights for SPG Platinum membership. All award stays including nights on points, Cash & Points award stays, and free nights earned from promotions like this year’s Stay 3 and earn one free Starwood Resort night count as elite qualifying stays and nights.

Award Stays Count for Elite

• Free Nights on SPG Points
• SPG Cash & Points Awards
• Free Nights earned from SPG Promotions
• SPG 5th Night Free Awards count as 5 elite nights.
• Only SPG award stays and nights with check-out date October 2, 2011 or later will count. No retroactive credit for 2011.
• SPG Award stays gifted to another member will be elite qualifying stays for the member who stays on the award and no elite status for the member who gifts the award.

This announcement may be old news to many readers who saw a wikileaks-type pre-release from our own Julian Assange-like hero for the travel loyalty program world. Gary Leff broke the SPG news on Monday, September 26 and then backed up his source in writing when he published a confidential SPG memo to Starwood Hotels General Managers on his View from the Wing blog on Tuesday, September 27.

Starwood Preferred Guest officially announced the new SPG member benefit on Wednesday, September 27 with its webpage “Award Nights Count“.

Loyalty Traveler Analysis

SPG members who regularly earn SPG Platinum with 25 paid stays or 50 paid nights are concerned this change will add competition for suite upgrades from more new Platinum members reaching Platinum elite qualification levels through award stays.

Here are links to FlyerTalk and MilePoint threads discussing the award stays count change.

Some SPG members speculate this change may result in SPG establishing a new higher tier above Platinum elite.

Personally, I like this change for Starwood Preferred Guest.

I have had more than a dozen award stays using SPG points and Cash & Points and SPG promotion award nights in the past year. Too bad this program change isn’t retroactive for all of calendar year 2011.

The change will also be useful for SPG credit card holders who can now redeem Cash & Points awards and Standard Awards while earning elite qualification credit. SPG Cash & Points awards require only 40% of the standard award points cost when supplemented with cash.

 

Gifting SPG Awards

The one term of the new policy that has an interesting new effect is when an SPG member gifts an award stay to another SPG member. I generally gift some Starwood award stays to my parents each year.

Hypothetically a person could be gifted one SPG award stay from 25 different SPG members and qualify for SPG Platinum without ever having spent a penny at a Starwood Hotel. A popular person could become loyalty royalty with SPG on the cheap.

Finding yourself short of elite qualifying stays or nights can be remedied with a little help from your friends and family to get you those few stays needed to make the elite threshold without a big outlay of cash.

Anyone want to sponsor a hotel stay for this loyalty traveler?

SPG American Express Credit Card factor

SPG members with the SPG American Express card automatically receive elite qualification credit each year with two elite stays and 5 elite nights being a complimentary benefit as a cardmember. This means SPG American Express cardmembers need only earn 8 stays or 20 nights in a calendar year to reach SPG Gold and 23 stays or 45 nights to reach SPG Platinum.

SPG members can double up the credit card elite qualification credits by having both an SPG personal American Express card and SPG Business AmEx card to jumpstart elite qualification each year with four elite stays and 10 elite nights.

SPG credit card elite stays and nights credit combined with award stays and nights and the ability to use a family member or friend’s points and receive additional elite credit for award stays gifted from another SPG member provide plenty of opportunities to reach SPG elite with minimal cash outlay.

Cash & Points Awards

The combination of SPG Cash & Points awards and Award Stays Count for Elite sets up an interesting price point for meeting elite qualification with relatively low annual hotel spend.

The cost to reach SPG Platinum elite is potentially as low as $625 and 30,000 points for someone spending 25 award stays on Cash & Points at a category 1 hotel. But that is not really a practical hotel stay pattern unless you are in some specific places in Asia. Cash & Points awards for Category 1 and 2 hotels in the U.S. are seldom offered in my experience searching hotel rates in the U.S. since these awards were introduced for U.S. hotels early 2010. This change to count award stays for elite qualifying credit probably won’t help expand the Cash & Points availability for U.S. category 1 and 2 hotels.

Category 3 and Category 4 hotels are a viable option for finding widespread Cash & Points availability in the U.S.

The SPG Cash & Points chart above shows the cost to reach SPG Gold or SPG Platinum solely through one-night stays (10 or 25 nights) or 50 nights on Cash & Points awards.

Earning SPG Platinum only on award stays for a U.S. member who likely needs to be staying at Category 3 and 4 hotels to realistically make this work for Cash & Points hotel stays in the U.S. still needs $1,125 and 70,000 points at Category 3 hotels or $1,500 plus 100,000 points for 25 nights on Category 4 Cash & Points awards.

Earning 70,000 to 100,000 points in a year is an achievement that will be limited mostly to SPG American Express credit card holders making 5-digit charges annually. Anyone earning those kinds of points with hotel stays likely already earns SPG Platinum elite from paid stays.

For the rest of us, award stays will likely offer the ability to pick up a few additional elite qualifying stays and nights per year.

I figure I can probably earn about 20,000 to 30,000 Starpoints per year from 15 hotel stays if the promotions are good and I pick up a few Best Rate Guarantee bonuses. I have the SPG American Express card so that is another two stays. And I typically have about 8 SPG award stays per year which I can likely sustain with the points earned from about 15 paid stays. The cost to maintain SPG Platinum can be around $2,000 a year for me with this award stays count for elite change.

Making top-tier elite is the best advice I can give to loyalty program members. The benefits provided during hotel stays for top-tier elites pays back the effort and loyalty. And I don’t think SPG will be flooded with new Platinum elite members.

If I was a SPG American Express credit card big spender who is not already SPG Platinum, then I think I would really love this change. The SPG Cash & Points award chart above shows how you can turn those points and a bit of cash into elite credit with Cash & Points award stays to reach mid-tier SPG Gold. Top-tier SPG Platinum offers additional hotel stay benefits like free internet and complimentary room upgrades, including suites.

Award Stays Count is not exclusive to SPG

Hilton HHonors has long counted award stays for elite status. This was a great benefit for me for several years when I was funneling hundreds of thousands of airline miles into HHonors points and redeeming dozens of free nights on points every year. Qualifying for HHonors Diamond elite generally required only about 20 paid stays and award stays made up the balance of my elite qualification requirement of 28 stays for HHonors Diamond status.

Choice Privileges added the benefit of counting award nights for elite qualification in January 2010.

 

The drive across Nevada I-80 is a drive I’ve made about a dozen times in the past thirty years. More than once I shared the joke with strangers along the way during this Brokeass Mountain Tour that 12 years had passed since Kelley and I drove Interstate 80 across Nevada and time fades away memories, especially when washed down with intervening years of beer.

Salt Lake City to Monterey, California is 830 miles and a stopover in Reno is a convenient and generally cheap hotel place to rest before venturing up the Sierra Nevada Mountains into California. The drive from Salt Lake City to Reno is 520 miles on Interstate 80 with very few places to stop for gas and food. Wendover, Wells, Elko, Battle Mountain, Winnemucca and Lovelock are the six locations for services over the 500 miles of Great Basin desert and mountains ranges.

Leaving Salt Lake City

Salt Lake City is located on the southeastern edge of Great Salt Lake between the lake and the rugged peaks of the Wasatch Mountains at 9,000 to over 11,000 feet dominating the eastern skyline of the city.

I read an article as we drove out of Salt Lake City about Utah’s restrictive alcohol sale laws. The realization came to me that I spent about 42 hours in Utah, but never once tried to buy a beer. I bought a case of beer at Costco before leaving Monterey and I had a 12 pack of beer from Denver while driving west across Utah. Bar hopping in Park City might have been more of a challenge than biking down a ski slope.

The I-80 freeway rides up right against the Great Salt Lake for several miles, but highway concrete dividers were hard to see over for good views of the lake.

Those hotel commercials for “I should have stayed at a Holiday Inn Express” actually worked in our case. Kelley was back to her normal lovable self after two rough days as a couple driving in the mountains. She kept repeating to me as we drove across the Great Basin deserts, “Remember, I don’t like the mountains.”

Interstate 80 out of Salt Lake City is flat.

There are some mountains on the southwest side of the Great Salt Lake in the Wasatch-Cache National Forest. Deseret Peak is 11,031 feet.

And on the other side of the mountains back to flat in the Great Salt Desert. This is home to Bonneville Salt Flats State Park in Utah.

Kelley actually drove all 500+ miles on the way to Reno, so I had the chance to take plenty of photos of Nevada desert lands. But looking at my phone pictures I see I didn’t.

West Wendover, Nevada

West Wendover, Nevada at the Utah state line is 120 miles west of Salt Lake City on Interstate-80.

A rude awakening results after crossing a hundred miles of Great Salt Lake Desert and physically flat miles and miles of salt flats to the blue horizon sky to find a poltical creation of commerce in the center of the desert replace the natural environment. The liberal laws of Nevada create an environment where for a couple of minutes deep in the desert the salt flats and mountain scenery are overshadowed by casino lights, hotels, fast food places, billboards and a neon flashing Strip Club sign visible from the freeway. Lap dances are just dollars away from the freeway.

Hotels, food and lapdances have kept West Wendover a bustling dot in the wild west for more than a century. AAA Guidebook says the area around Wendover is where US Air Force pilots trained for dropping the atomic bombs in WWII. The AAA map actually has large all cap font locator GREAT SALT LAKE DESERT, and in a smaller font shows Wendover Air Force Auxillary Field across the same desert lands of western Utah, south of Interstate 80. North of Interstate 80 is Hill Air Force Range.

And all this science I don’t understand
It’s just my job five days a week

     -Elton John – ‘Rocket Man’

In August 1983 Kelley and I drove back to Monterey from Denver on Interstate 80 leaving Salt Lake City at night after a rough day trying to sleep in a tent as we camped in the 100 degree heat of downtown SLC. We recall that trip as one of our stupidest travel ideas ever. The logic for our 1983 road trip in her Honda Civic with no air conditioning was to drive at night when it was cool and sleep during the day in a tent.

I recall every place we camped that trip as a sweat lodge endurance test.

The point of bringing up the 1983 trip is we saw a multi-million dollar light show crossing the Great Salt Lake Desert that night under Reagan’s watch. I estimate we saw missiles frequently shooting across the night sky for more than an hour in a display of fiery light I say rivaled any fireworks show I’ve ever seen. I think you need to have been in a war zone to have seen anything else like it.

Seeing the Air Force Testing Range on the AAA Utah map brought back that memory of a past desert crossing.

Pequop Summit

The highest point of Interstate 80 in Nevada is located in the sixty mile stretch between West Wendover and Wells where the road crosses the Pequop Mountains and Pequop Summit sits at 6,987 feet. Kelley had one day respite from the oxygen deprived air at 8,500+ feet. The Sierra Nevada still awaits as pioneers heading west to California for the gold fields discovered 160 years ago.

Since I mislabeled some photos in Utah in yesterday’s post, I will state that I am not certain this photo is Pequop Summit. It was taken at one of the summits on I-80 in eastern Nevada.

The California Trail

Humboldt River in Nevada begins as Humboldt Wells at a spring in the eastern Humboldt Mountains. These desert places are named for 19th century German scientist Alexander von Humboldt. I find it interesting to see so many western state place names for a man who primarily explored South America. The guy spent time with President Thomas Jefferson in 1804 in Washington D.C., but never traveled north of Mexico City in the North America interior. I studied several years at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. I have also seen Humboldt University in Berlin.

The California emigrants in the mid-19th century traveled to Idaho and then headed south from Fort Hall on the Snake River near modern day Pocatello, Idaho. The objective was reaching the Humboldt River and following the river west from the Ruby Mountains for 300 miles where the river ends in the Humboldt Sink.

The Great Basin rivers all terminate in the basin region. Bear River is the largest and terminates in the Great Salt Lake. Humboldt River crosses much of Nevada, but terminates almost 100 miles from Reno.

The big story of the day while driving across the Nevada desert was a judge’s order stating the wild Mustang horse roundup could go ahead. Kelley and I saw wild horses when we drove east across Nevada on Highway 6, about 200 miles south of Interstate 80.

The roundup started as we were driving through Nevada and went through the month of August to round up 1,300 horses from a population estimated to be 2,200 horses in the region around the Ruby Mountains between Elko and Ely, Nevada. That is around 15% of the total wild horse population of Nevada. BLM says the area can only sustain 500 to 900 wild horses. 12 horses died in the six week roundup.

A federal judge refused to halt the roundup, but issued a temporary restraining order in the last week of the wild horse roundup banning mistreatment of the mustangs. An RJG.com piece on the Wild Horse Freedom Federation federal lawsuit against President Obama’s Interior Secretary Kenneth Salazar has YouTube video link with a 10-minute video showing a contractor working the BLM wild mustang roundup chasing horses in a helicopter August 5, 2011. One of the horses seen in the video was one of the 12 roundup deaths.

“I have my freedom but I don’t have much time
Faith has been broken, tears must be cried
Let’s do some living, after we die”

     -Rolling Stones – ‘Wild Horses’

Forty Mile Desert

Modern technology propelled us 500 miles across the desert stretches of Utah and Nevada in a mere eight hours with time to eat a fast-food meal and fill up the gas tank. The pioneer emigrants on the California Trail were doing well to make the journey in a month.

Traveling with oxen, mules, cows and horses required plenty of water and grass to maintain the animals. The emigrant trails west followed river sources. The most treacherous section of the California Trail journey was just one hundred miles from Reno. A few miles southwest of Lovelock, Nevada on I-80 is where the Humboldt River ends at the Humboldt Sink. Forty miles of desert with no water sources separate the end of the Humboldt River from the Truckee River that flows east from Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada through Reno to drain into the Great Basin’s Pyramid Lake. Another more southerly route required a different forty mile desert crossing to reach the Carson River. Wagons had to be hauled across these forty mile stretches of desert that were lined in the  1850s with carcasses by the thousands before the railroad crossed Nevada.

Forty Mile Desert, an alkali wasteland, was the most dreaded portion of the entire 2,000 mile California Trail journey according to a place marker at the rest area at the intersection of Interstate-80 and US Route 95.

A trail survey from 1850 counted:

• 1,061 dead mules
• almost 5,000 horses
• 3,750 cattle
• 953 graves

The California Trail route was most heavily used from 1849 to 1859. The completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 opened the west to far more emigrants.

Emigrant pioneers still required another month of travel from Forty Mile Desert across the Sierra Nevada into the Central Valley of California.

Kelley and I checked into the Holiday Inn Sparks-Reno on a PointBreaks night about 90 minutes later.

After a good night’s sleep we had one more off-the-interstate road journey remaining before arriving home in Monterey as I planned to take us over Carson Pass on Highway 88 over the California Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Brokeass Mountain Road Trip, July 2011

Monterey, California – Denver, Colorado

• Yosemite’s Tioga Pass Road across the Sierra Nevada Mountains
• Westin Monache Resort Mammoth for year round vacations
• Even Lonelier than the Loneliest Road in America
• Earth’s Oldest Trees in Great Basin National Park Nevada
• Less extreme than 127 Hours in Utah
• Brokeass Mountain Tour eastbound – Hotel Value at High Elevation
• Brokeass Mountain Tour visits Starwood in Denver
• Driving by the 14ers South Park to Aspen, Colorado
• Top of the Rockies on the High Road to Aspen – Independence Pass 12,095 feet.
• St. Regis Aspen – Too Late to Cancel
• Aspen, Colorado to Park City, Utah: Ghost lands of Buffalo Soldiers, Utes and Dinosaurs
• The California Trail across Nevada

 

The column I wrote for InsideFlyer October 2011 is Matching Hotel Promotions to Your Travel Style. The problem with writing an article about hotel loyalty promotions for a magazine are new offers typically come out between the due date for the article (Sep 8) and the time the article is published and online. My Loyalty Traveler column on InsideFlyer.com is free for nonsubscriber readers.

The Travel Styles I matched with end-of-year promotions include:

Best Low Spend Bonus — Marriott

Best Luxury or Hotel Suite Bargain — Hotels.com

Best Long Weekend Getaway — Starwood

Best Upscale Hotel Extended Stay Bonus — Hyatt

Best Midscale Hotel Extended Stay Bonus — Choice

Best Miles Bonuses — Marriott

Best Road Warrior Bonus — IHG

Links to all these offers are in the InsideFlyer.com column.

In the past three weeks there have been additional high value loyalty offers that fit into the mix of best value hotel loyalty promotions for upcoming hotel stays.

Hilton HHonors free night after every four stays or 10 nights is the highest potential value offer for Q4-2011 hotel stays. $2,500 in hotel stays can potentially provide a $4,000 luxury hotel vacation on free nights. Almost all the other non-spend based hotel offers have a limit to the number of bonus points, miles, and free nights that a member can earn during the promotion. The exclusion list is the main impediment to making this Hilton offer a truly outstanding offer for the quarter. San Francisco Bay Area is severely impacted by the nonparticipating Hilton properties list.

I add Hilton’s Fast Ways to Free Stays offer to the Best Road Warrior Bonus and actually would rank this ahead of the IHG 4x points offer listed in my InsideFlyer article.

Other recent loyalty promotion offers:

Club Carlson for a free night after two stays at Country Inns & Suites Oct 2- Dec 1 for stays from Sunday to Thursday.

Wyndham Cash back and Double Points Sep 15-Nov 18.

Both of these offers fit well in Best Low Spend bonus category. But I still favor Marriott as the best low spend offer although Country Inn offers a free night with a two-night midweek stay and might be a better offer than Marriott for the person needing just one hotel stay.

Best Mileage Bonus seekers who fly Southwest can add Hyatt’s 1,800 Rapid Rewards points per stay October 1-Jan 15, 2012 to the list of high value offers, especially since this offer can be combined with the Gold Passport 5,000 bonus points every three nights.

Best Car Rental Bonus didn’t fit in my InsideFlyer column word limit. Club Carlson offers 9,000 points for a three day car rental from Avia or Budget for stays through the end of the year. 9,000 points is sufficient for a free hotel night at a Club Carlson category 1 hotel. Or you can exchange 8,000 points for 1,000 airline miles. Not bad for a car rental.

 

There truly are few roads crossing the canyonlands and mountains of Utah besides Interstates 80, 15 and 70 in the west and east directions. Historic transportation routes across the Great Basin deserts are relatively close to present-day Interstate 80 and Highway U.S. 50.

Getting off the interstate for much of the road trip across the deserts from Colorado to California was one of my objectives during the July 2011 road trip I dubbed Brokeass Mountain Tour.

After one night at the St. Regis Aspen we drove Interstate 70 for 27 miles west from Glenwood Springs to Rifle, Colorado where I headed north on two-lane Colorado State Highway 13, rather than drive Interstate 70 west into Utah.

Colorado Highway 13 travels through high country cattle grazing land loaded with elk crossing signs, although we didn’t see any elk, only cattle on this drive.

My objective was connecting to US Route 40, the major east-west highway across northern Colorado. Forty miles north of Interstate-70 is Meeker, Colorado and we turned onto Colorado State Highway 64 and followed the White River flowing west. The road had recently been scraped clean of mud and Flood Warning signs were still posted along the road. Record breaking rainfall had hit the Rocky Mountains just two days before in places like Breckenridge and Aspen. The road looked like the rains had washed mud from the mountains right across the road for several miles.

Meekeris one of those small towns with a significant history. A battle between the Union Army and the Ute Indians in September 1879 resulted in the tribal lands being confiscated and the removal of the White River Utes of Colorado to the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation in northeastern Utah. This reservation is located in eastern Utah between US Route 40 and Interstate 70.

The historic Colorado Hotel in Glenwood Springs has a Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Suite.

Apparently T.R. also did some mountain lion hunting based out of Meeker, CO.

An aerial view of the White River Valley around Meeker and the “China Wall” reveals the ruggedness of the western Colorado outback.

Highway 64 follows the White River through the western Colorado outback. This is the wild west where there aren’t many towns or people or paved roads. The realization that there are thousands of miles of paved road connecting small towns dozens of miles apart across the western U.S. created an alluring appeal for me to explore these sparsely populated places of hidden beauty that are bypassed by the vast majority of travelers on an interstate journey through Colorado and Utah.

Throughout my life I learned plenty of history from song references and one of the songs that connected with me during this drive from Colorado to Utah is Bob Marley’s “Buffalo Soldier”.

Buffalo soldier in the heart of america

If you know your history

then you would know where you coming from.

~Bob Marley – Buffalo Soldier

Buffalo Soldiers were involved in the 1879 relocation of Utes from the White River region of Colorado to the Uintah and Ouray Reservation in Utah. Henry Johnson was a Buffalo Soldier recipient of the Medal of Honor for actions at the Milk River Battle in Colorado 1879. Here is a fascinating historical lens to the Indian Wars and Colorado from an October 3, 1879 New York Times article describing the White River 1879 problems with reference to a buffalo soldier military unit in Colorado.

Kenney Reservoir on Highway 64 near Rangely, Colorado.

Future western states road trips will likely be solo since exploring the remote west is not such an alluring trip ticket for my wife who would much rather be exploring the historic cities of Europe.

The Colorado Plateau

The Colorado Plateau extends from the Grand Canyon region of Arizona in the southeastern portion of the Plateau to the Green River canyons of northeastern Utah and Yampa River in northwestern Colorado where the rivers converge at Dinosaur National Monument park.

The Green River is the largest tributary river to the Colorado River from its source in the Wyoming Rocky Mountains where it drains the high plateau on a course through Utah.

Driving I-70 east into Colorado Kelley and I figured Fruita, the first city where we drove adjacent to the flooded Colorado River, was a place for growing fruit, but why was Grand Junction, named Grand?

The AAA guide suggested Grand Junction’s name was due to its transportation junction location. Turns out the Colorado River from its headwaters in the Rocky Mountains to where it joins the Green River in Canyonlands National Park, Utah was named the Grand River up until 1921 when Edward T. Taylor, U.S. Representative from Colorado  introduced a resolution to rename the headwaters section of the river in the state of Colorado as the Colorado River.

The Green River has a much larger watershed than the Colorado River before they converge at Canyonlands National Park in southeastern Utah. The Yampa River is the second largest river in Utah and primarily runs west from Streamboat Springs, Colorado to where it joins the Green River in Dinosaur National Monument.

Dinosaur National Monument

The area north of US Route 40 in northwest Colorado and northeast Utah is dinosaur country. The Dinosaur National Monument Quarry Visitor Center has been in a temporary structure since 2006 when the main center closed for safety reasons. The new Dinosaur Quarry Center rebuilt using funds from the Obama stimulus package American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 will reopen next week on October 4, 2011.

Traveling from Dinosaur, Colorado to Vernal, Utah reminded me of the economic divide we used to experience when living in Downeast Maine and crossing the border into Canada where the standard of living was visibly higher. Vernal, Utah has money, lots of major chain hotels, restaurants and fast food joints and the Utah Field House of Natural History State Park Museum for a chance to see dinosaur fossils and full size replicas without having to drive to the Dinosaur National Monument.

There were several good dinosaur models I saw in Vernal, Utah while driving through town, but no pictures. The photo above was taken outside the Field Museum during my trip to Chicago in October 2010.

The Uintah Basin, Utah

The Uintah Reservation of the Ute Indians runs through the Uintah Basin south of the Uintah Mountains where the highest peaks in Utah are located. This part of Utah is still sparsely populated and while predominantly a white citizenry, the largest town of Roosevelt was founded by homesteaders and not Mormons. The Uintah Basin was developed beginning in 1906 by homesteaders  with paid claims who bought land within the Uintah Indian Reservation at $1.25 per acre allowed by the Dawes Act as a way to integrate Native Americans with the American emigrant population.

Fort Duchesne is the current administrative center for the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation, the second largest reservation in the U.S. Fort Duchesne was originally built and manned by Buffalo Soldiers for 25 years from 1886 to 1911. An article by Robert Foster from Wild West magazine February 2000 provides some history of Buffalo Soldiers in Utah Territory.

I never realized Utah had places with such green land in late July. This region of Utah is a strong contrast to the canyonlands of the southern regions of the state. Looking north to the Uintah Mountains provided some striking views of mountainous terrain that looked to be wild west wilderness to my eyes. Since I was driving west on US 40, I did not get any good photos of the high mountains to the north.

My plan was to hang around Park City for about three hours taking photographs of the major resorts, but Kelley vetoed that Loyalty Traveler assignment. She asked me to take her to our hotel and then I could ride a bike down a ski slope by myself and bar hop all over Park City if I was still feeling like an Olympian.

 

Kelley was under the impression we were staying at a resort in Park City when I parked the car downtown and took her to the lobby of the Marriott Vacation Club Summit Watch. When she realized I was just taking pictures of resorts and I told her we would stay at the Holiday Inn Express in Salt Lake City she was relieved, and so was I that she wasn’t disappointed about not staying in a Park City resort hotel. She wanted to be out of the 7,000 ft. high altitude mountains of Park City ASAP.

All I can say to my readers who would have liked to learn more about Park City is that I was disappointed at being in one of the great ski resorts of the USA and unable to properly tour the town. I am planning to drive another road trip at my leisure and likely will pass through Park City, Utah again next June when I travel to Keystone, Colorado for Travel Blog Exchange 2012 Conference.

Feeling kind of miffed about my aborted tour of Park City I proceeded to drive the road up the mountainside from Park City with every intention to drive Highway 190 across the Wasatch Mountains to Salt Lake City and bypass Interstate 80. And I might have made it too if there was better road signage on those mountain slopes. At about 9,000 feet I hit unpaved road with huge potholes and abandoned my mountain road route to Salt Lake City.

Any locals to Park City reading this blog? Give me a clue in the comments as to where I missed Highway 190 when I was at Empire Pass above Park City.

I backtracked down the mountainside to Park City and drove the Interstate-80 freeway to Salt Lake City.

Kelley really liked those Holiday Inn Express breakfasts on this trip so it is probably best we didn’t stay at the St. Regis Deer Valley or Waldorf Astoria in Park City where the price of breakfast would not fit my brokeass mountain budget. In retrospect, I think the Hyatt Escala Lodge breakfast, complimentary as a Hyatt Gold Passport Diamond member, would have likely impressed her more if she would have been feeling well enough to eat in Park City. Her appetite was much better the next morning in Salt Lake City once we dropped back down a few thousand feet from the mountain slopes of Park City.

For readers I guess the thing to keep in mind is be prepared for some queaziness when you decide to travel to a ski resort at 7,000 feet or more if that is not an altitude you are acclimated to function in.

We had a decent stay at the Holiday Inn Express Salt Lake City. While swimming in the outdoor pool we met a couple from Nova Scotia who had driven cross country to Vancouver and down the Pacific Northwest coast to Eureka and back across I-80 to Salt Lake City on their journey home. They were asking for travel advice for Indiana. Sorry, not my expertise.

We shared stories of northern California with Kelley and I having lived in Eureka for nearly a decade and also Downeast Maine tales from our two years around Acadia National Park when we also had the ability to travel a bit around the Canadian Maritime Provinces.

Salt Lake City was under a smog alert for the day we headed west out of the city. What a shame that a city in such a remote location has air pollution reminiscent of Los Angeles. We packed up and headed out to the clear air of eastern Nevada, just another 30 hours from getting home to Monterey.

 

Brokeass Mountain Road Trip, July 2011

Monterey, California – Denver, Colorado

• Yosemite’s Tioga Pass Road across the Sierra Nevada Mountains
• Westin Monache Resort Mammoth for year round vacations
• Even Lonelier than the Loneliest Road in America
• Earth’s Oldest Trees in Great Basin National Park Nevada
• Less extreme than 127 Hours in Utah
• Brokeass Mountain Tour eastbound – Hotel Value at High Elevation
• Brokeass Mountain Tour visits Starwood in Denver
• Driving by the 14ers South Park to Aspen, Colorado
• Top of the Rockies on the High Road to Aspen – Independence Pass 12,095 feet.
• St. Regis Aspen – Too Late to Cancel
• Aspen, Colorado to Park City, Utah: Ghost lands of Buffalo Soldiers, Utes and Dinosaurs
• The California Trail across Nevada

 

First rule for two people driving a 2,500 mile road trip is “Do not criticize the other person’s driving!”

I broke that rule about one hour out of Denver when Kelley tried to accelerate up a steep grade by pushing the pedal to the metal to pass a truck. I watched the RPM gauge almost touch red as the car struggled in the high altitude of the Colorado Rockies to muster all its V-6 power going uphill with little acceleration effect.

The first exit she saw placed me in the driver’s seat for the next two days of driving back to California.

The driving effort meant double duty since Kelley refuses to take photos when I drive, or actually triple duty since motion sickness inhibits her ability to read a map as a car passenger.

South Park is about 1,000 square miles of grasslands in the high elevation basin valley beneath the high peaks of the Rockies. The land is gorgeous viewing during a car drive, even when the weather is ominously closing off the mid-day sky in darkness. The mountain storms had wreaked havoc on Aspen just the day before and flash flooding had been a persistent problem for the previous three weeks in the Colorado Rockies and Great Basin region of the west during the month of July.

At one point I hit a rain downpour so intense I couldn’t see out my car window at all with the windshield wipers on full speed. The rain puddled up on the pavement within seconds to create hydroplaning conditions and there was no shoulder on Highway 285 to pull off the road. Fortunately the road was straight and no other vehicles barreled down on my car as I dropped the speed from 60mph to about 25 mph. I drove out of the hard rain in about a minute.

The lack of a navigator resulted in my missing the Highway 24 cutoff road to Aspen and having to backtrack ten miles north along Highway 285. The sky was still filled with dark storm clouds all around the mountains as we headed to higher elevations.

The small town of Buena Vista, Colorado on Highway 24 is aptly named for its beautiful view of the 14,000+ ft. mountains of the Collegiate Peaks. The Best Western Plus Buena Vista hotel sits at 8,000 feet in elevation and provides a good stopover place for outdoors activities in the rugged mountains nearby or white water rafting on the Arkansas River.

Highway 24 north of Buena Vista goes to Leadville, the historic silver mining town at 10,152 feet elevation with the distinction of being the highest altitude incorporated town in the U.S. In the late 19th century Leadville had a population only exceeded by Denver, Colorado in the state. The inclement weather and late afternoon hour kept Leadville off our itinerary.

Highway 82 is the road to Aspen and Glenwood Springs with one terminus on Highway 24 about midway between Buena Vista and Leadville.

The weather turned brighter as we drove the road to Aspen. There was no better time for the rain clouds to dissipate as we entered the rugged valley and climbed Highway 82 to Independence Pass where the Continental Divide marker at 12,095 feet designates the east-west geologic feature where rivers originating in these mountains flow east to the Gulf of Mexico (Atlantic Ocean) or flow west to the Pacific Ocean.

As we drove Highway 82 I mentioned to Kelley that this road would be ideal for a cycling race. Low and behold, the USA ProCycling Challenge 2011 did exactly that August 24, 2011 in Stage 2 from Gunnison to Aspen in the seven day race August 22-28 around the state of Colorado.

 

The USA ProCycling stage description of this road states cyclists have only 60% of the oxygen at Independence Pass compared to sea level. Kelley and I live at sea level here in Monterey and she felt poorly at Independence Pass. The altitude made me feel high on several levels, but not too high to drive downhill to Aspen.

We watched the USA Pro Cycling Challenge in August and I saw several miles of gravel road I drove downhill just outside of Aspen was a temporary road condition since Highway 82 was newly paved when cyclists came down the mountains from Independence Pass at speeds over 50 mph in places. Congratulations to George Hincapie, winner of Stage 2 USA Pro Cycling Challenge Aspen finish who may become the all-time Tour de France longevity racer next summer if he races his 17th Tour.

This post includes some of the photos I took with my Droid phone camera since my primary camera broke on the second day of this 12 day road trip.

Brokeass Mountain Road Trip, July 2011

Monterey, California – Denver, Colorado

• Yosemite’s Tioga Pass Road across the Sierra Nevada Mountains
• Westin Monache Resort Mammoth for year round vacations
• Even Lonelier than the Loneliest Road in America
• Earth’s Oldest Trees in Great Basin National Park Nevada
• Less extreme than 127 Hours in Utah
• Brokeass Mountain Tour eastbound – Hotel Value at High Elevation
• Brokeass Mountain Tour visits Starwood in Denver
• Driving by the 14ers South Park to Aspen, Colorado
• Top of the Rockies on the High Road to Aspen – Independence Pass 12,095 feet.
• St. Regis Aspen – Too Late to Cancel
• Aspen, Colorado to Park City, Utah: Ghost lands of Buffalo Soldiers, Utes and Dinosaurs
• The California Trail across Nevada
• Homeward Bound – Carson Pass Highway 88 over the Sierra Nevada to Monterey

14ers.com is an interesting website I came across when writing this piece for a list of the tallest peaks in Colorado with photos.

Marriott Rewards PointSavers discount the cost of a reward night by one category level. For example, a category 6 hotel at 30,000 points is only 25,000 points for a PointSavers reward night. The number of participating hotels in the current PointSavers list is disappointly low with fewer than 50 of 3,600 hotels worldwide offering a PointSavers discount.

Ritz-Carlton Hotels participate in PointSavers, but since the creation of Ritz-Carlton Rewards in 2010 there have been very few Ritz-Carlton Hotels posted on PointSavers.

Each participating property has its own date availability calendar in the same way Hilton HHonors PointStretchers designate specific dates for hotels.

Marriott Rewards PointSavers (September – December 2011)

* Standard Marriott Rewards category level shown below. PointSavers rate is one category level lower.

United States

Alabama

Grand Hotel Marriott Resort, Golf Club & Spa (Category 5)

• - September 5 – December 31, 2011
• - January 1 – March 29, 2012

Renaissance Birmingham Ross Bridge Golf Resort & Spa (Category 5)

• - September 16-28,2011
• - October 2-8, 17-20, 23, 30-31, 2011
• - November 1 – December 31, 2011
• - January 1 – March 31, 2012

Arizona

The Buttes, A Marriott Resort (Category 5)

• - November 18-27, 2011
• - December 16 – 25, 2011

 

California

Marriott’s Desert Springs Villas I (Category 6)

• - September 5 – 29, 2011

Marriott’s Desert Springs Villas II (Category 6)

• - September 5 – November 3, 2011

Marriott’s Shadow Ridge (Category 6)

• - September 5 – November 3, 2011

Marriott’s Newport Coast Villas (Category 6)

• - October 17 – November 21, 2011
• - November 27 – December 22, 2011

Napa Valley Marriott Hotel & Spa (Category 6)

• - November 13 – December 29, 2011

 

Florida

Coral Springs Marriott Golf Club and Convention Center (Category 4)

• - September 18 – October 6, 2011
• - October 9-20, 2011
• - October 23-31, 2011

Renaissance World Golf Village (Category 4)

• - September 8 – October 10, 2011
• - October 13-16, 23-24, 26-27, 29-31, 2011

 

Texas

Houston Marriott at Hobby Airport (category 3)

• - August 30 – October 2, 2011
• - October 7-31, 2011

 

Virginia

Fairfield Inn & Suites Virginia Beach Oceanfront (Category 6)

• - September 19 – December 31, 2011

Courtyard Oceanfront North Virginia Beach (Category 6)

• - September 19 – December 31, 2011

 

Aruba

Renaissance Aruba Resort & Casino (Category 6)

• - September 1 – 30, 2011
• - October 1 – 31, 2011
• - November 1 – 30, 2011
• - December 1 – 22, 2011

 

Germany

Cologne Marriott Hotel (Category 5)

• - December 19 – 30, 2011

Renaissance Cologne Hotel (Category 5)

• - December 19 – 30, 2011

 

United Kingdom

Aberdeen Marriott Hotel (Category 4)

• - October 7, 2011
• - December 11, 15-28, 2011

Birmingham Marriott Hotel (Category 4)

• - October 21-30, 2011
• - December 22-30, 2011

Breadsall Priory, A Marriott hotel & Country Club (Category 5)

• - October 23-28, 2011
• - November 17-20, 25-27, 2011
• - December 27-30, 2011

Cardiff Marriott Hotel (Category 5)

• - December 18-22, 2011
• - December 27-30, 2011

Cheshunt Marriott Hotel (Category 4)

• - September 30, 2011
• - October 15-16, 23, 2011
• - November 27, 2011
• - December 4, 11, 18, 21-22, 26-30, 2011

Dalmahoy, A Marriott Hotel & Country Club (Category 5)

• - September 25, 2011
• - October 2,9,16, 23, 30, 2011
• - November 6, 13, 20, 27, 2011
• - December 2, 4, 9, 11, 15-30, 2011

Durham Marriott Hotel Royal County (Category 5)

• - September 30, 2011
• - October 23, 31, 2011
• - November 6, 24, 27, 30, 2011
• - December 4, 8, 11, 18 – 30, 2011

Edinburgh Marriott Hotel (Category 5)

• - October 9, 23, 31, 2011
• - November 6, 13, 20, 27, 2011
• - December 1,2,4,11, 16, 18-30, 2011

Forest of Arden, A Marriott Hotel & Country Club (Category 5)

• - October 21-30, 2011
• - December 22-30, 2011

Hanbury Manor, A Marriott Hotel & Country Club (Category 5)

• - September 23-31, 2011
• - November 4, 6, 11, 13, 17-18, 20, 25, 27-29, 2011
• - December 4, 11, 18-22, 25-30, 2011

Hollins Hall, A Marriott Hotel & Country Club (Category 4)

• - August 18 – December 30, 2011

Huntingdon Marriott Hotel (Category 4)

• - October 21-30, 2011
• - December 22-30, 2011

Leeds Marriott Hotel (Category 4)

• - December 18-30, 2011

Leicester Marriott Hotel (Category 4)

• - October 21-30, 2011
• - December 22-30, 2011

Liverpool Marriott Hotel City Centre (Category 5)

• - December 18-30, 2011

London Marriott Hotel Grosvenor Square (Category 8 )

• - December 18-30, 2011

Manchester Airport Marriott Hotel (Category 4)

• - December 18-30, 2011

Manchester Marriott Victoria & Albert Hotel (Category 5)

• - December 18 – 29, 2011

Newcastle Marriott Hotel Gosforth Park (Category 4)

• - October 2, 3, 21, 30, 2011
• - November 6, 10, 13, 20, 21, 2011
• - December 5, 18 – 29, 2011.

Northampton Marriott Hotel (Category 4)

• - October 21-30, 2011
• - December 22-30, 2011

Peterborough Marriott Hotel (Category 3)

• - October 21-30, 2011
• - December 22-30, 2011

Preston Marriott Hotel (Category 4)

• - December 18 – 30, 2011

Renaissance Manchester City Centre Hotel (Category 5)

• - December 18-29, 2011

Sprowston Manor, A Marriott Hotel & Country Club (Category 5)

• - December 27-30, 2011

Sunderland Marriott Hotel (Category 4)

• - October 2, 3, 9, 16, 20, 30, 2011
• - November 3, 4, 6, 10, 13, 17, 20, 27, 2011
• - December 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, 18-22, 26-29, 2011

Swansea Marriott Hotel  (Category 5)

• - September 1-30, 2011
• - December 1-10, 13-30, 2011

Swindon Marriott Hotel (Category 3)

• - September 23-25, 2011
• - September 30 – October 2, 2011
• - October 7-9, 14-16, 21, 23, 28-30, 2011
• - November 4-6, 11-13, 18-20, 25-27, 2011
• - December 2-4, 9, 11, 18, 2011

Waltham Abbey Marriott Hotel (Category 4)

• - September 25-26, 29, 2011
• - October 2, 9, 16, 23, 24-27, 30, 31, 2011
• - November 3, 6, 13-14, 17, 20-22, 27-29, 2011
• - December 4, 11, 15, 18-23, 27-30, 2011

Worsley Park, A Marriott Hotel & Country Club (Category 4)

• - December 18 – 30, 2011

York Marriott Hotel (Category 5)

• - October 30 – November 20, 2011
• - December 19 – 24, 2011

Hilton HHonors released the highest value hotel loyalty promotion of all the major chains for a free night every 4 stays or 10 nights October 1 – December 31, 2011. There is no limit to the number of free night certificates a member may earn during the promotion period. Free night certificates are valid at any Hilton brand hotel worldwide. Free night certificates expire six months after issuance.

Members must choose between earning free nights or an alternate promotion earning double points. There are about 270 properties opting out of this promotion, almost all in the U.S.

HHonors Fast Ways to Free Stays promotion registration is required.

Free Nights or Double Points?

HHonors Fast Ways to Free Stays 2011-Q4 promotion offers the choice of double points or a free night every 4 stays or 10 nights.

Double points is only a better offer if you think you will not qualify for a free night during the promotion period or perhaps you are a really big spender. Considering a person needs to spend $5,000 to earn 50,000 bonus points with the double points offer, most HHonors members will likely have four stays or ten nights and earn a free night certificate long before spending $5,000.

HHonors ‘Fast Ways to Free Stays’ Basics

• Promotion period = October 1-December 31, 2011
• Promotion available for HHonors members worldwide
• About 270 hotels opted out promotion among 3,700 hotels worldwide. Almost all hotels opting out are located in U.S.
• List of non-participating Hilton Hotels.
• Member must select either double points or free nights version of promotion.
• No changing promotion preference from double points or free nights after member registers.
• Double points = 10 bonus points per $1 above regular earning rate for Points & Points or Points & Miles earners.
• Free Night certificate may be redeemed at any Hilton brand property worldwide (even the hotels that have opted out of the promotion for earning free nights.)
• Ten nights qualification does not need to be consecutive nights.
• HHonors members earn regular points and miles during this promotion.
• HHonors reward stays do not count for free night qualification.
• HHonors free night certificates expire 6 months after issuance. (Assuming all certificates are issued by January 31, 2012, this means that the latest date is likely July 2012 for redeeming free nights.

Loyalty Traveler Analysis

This is a 5-key promotion and the most lucrative offer for 2011-Q4 hotel stays.

Hotel hopping for one-night stays means this offer is like getting 12,500 to 15,000 or even 20,000 bonus points per hotel stay when a free night certificate is redeemed for a category 7 HHonors hotel reward night or Waldorf-Astoria Collection where reward nights can be as high as 80,000 points per night.

I am definitely looking to take advantage of this HHonors ‘Fast Ways to Free Stays’ offer as my primary high value rebate for hotel stays over the next three months.

Hilton HHonors Promotion non-participating hotels 

I watched the movie 127 Hours this week. This is the story of Aron Ralston who went canyoneering in Utah in 2003, had his hand trapped by a boulder when he fell deep into a narrow slot canyon and with little hope of rescue, due to the remoteness of the accident location, amputated his own hand to save himself. The movie 127 Hours is worth watching just to see the slot canyon imagery prior to his accident, if nothing else. Or you can read the book by Aron Ralston – Between a Rock and a Hard Place.

The movie reinvigorated my desire to finish a piece about traveling through Utah on the Brokeass Mountain Tour road trip I made in July. I attempted several drafts of this post since July and for some reason I kept getting bogged down in Utah history, state facts and stories that had little relevance to my 42 hour experience traveling through the state. Here are some notes from my eastbound road trip.

The Brokeass Mountain Tour plan had been to drive to Arches National Park and possibly Canyonlands National Park in Utah, but time and heat were factors for our road trip in July from Monterey to Denver. Five days or 127 hours would make a great excursion trip possible into the canyons or mountains, but remember to tell people where you plan to be when you wander off the main roads. There are some remote places in this part of the country.

There is Nothing Between Here and There except a whole lot of beauty.

The road sign in the opening scenes of the movie 127 Hours shows “Next Services 100 miles”. My memory of the actual road sign on Interstate 70 East at Salina, Utah read “Next Services 110 Miles” which refers to the next town with gas, food and hotels at Green River, Utah. This is the longest stretch of Interstate in the U.S. with no services. Interstate 70 passes through the Fish Lake Mountains as the road crosses Summit Pass at 7,923 ft. in the Utah high desert Wasatch Plateau. The rock formations are enchanting.

 

We crossed Utah on a mid-July afternoon with the temperature in the 90s when we had been hiking through forests at over 10,000 ft. elevation on Wheeler Peak in eastern Nevada just six hours before.

 

My destination was Moab, but with the remarkable ability of cell phones I saw the temperature at Moab was near 100 degrees and the rates were in the $150 to $200 per night range for most hotels. I changed my plans and booked a hotel room at the Holiday Inn Express Green River, Utah while stopped at a gas station in Salina, Utah where US Route 50 joins Interstate-70. Cell phone reception is really spotty when crossing the long stretches of no services areas between towns.

The San Rafael Swell and Ghost Rocks

The construction of Interstate-70 across the San Rafael Swell  was considered an engineering marvel. There are no gas or food services along the 110 mile stretch between Salina and Green River, but there are two rest stops. The Ghost Rocks rest areas are located about 40 miles west of Green River on both sides of the freeway. These are the highest points of I-70 in the San Rafael Swell.

Rather than trying to explain the geological features of the San Rafael Swell, I’ll direct readers to Wikipedia. This is an area where water erosion has created slot canyons like the one where Aron Ralston was trapped between a rock and a hard place.

Green River, Utah was a smaller town than I expected. The place was loaded with tourists; some heading to the National Parks, and others heading east to Colorado or west to Nevada and California. Several chain hotels were located near the river about two miles off the Interstate.

Holiday Inn Express Green River at 15,000 points was my pick for the night. There was also a Comfort Inn (Choice Privileges) and a Super 8 (Wyndham Rewards) and the River Terrace Inn, across the street from the Holiday Inn, that looked to be the most upscale and popular of the lodging choices. The lowest room rate for the Holiday Inn Express was about $120 after tax.

We bought a pizza at Cathy’s Pizza & Deli in town and it was quite good. I stopped to take a photo of the swollen Green River, but the bugs at dusk were so intense that I couldn’t bear to walk over the bridge for a photo opportunity.

July had seen many days of heavy rain across Utah. We delayed the start of our trip by one week to avoid rain storms over Nevada and Utah. The town of Green River was actually under Flood Watch Advisory as we drove the bridge across the swollen Green River. The bridge had a dozen or more pedestrian onlookers photographing the fast moving water under the bridge. Part of the lawn of the River Terrace Inn was flooded. The Holiday Inn Express was just about 100 yards from the river bank and I wasn’t so sure a ground floor room was in our best interest, but the receptionist kept going on and on about how I was getting an upgrade based on my Priority Club Platinum elite status. The room was a good size room with two Queen beds, a table and a cushioned chair with ottoman.

Nearly every day of the road trip I read in papers and heard news stories about people drowning in flash floods in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming. Some of these people even died while driving their cars when they unexpectedly ran into flood waters.

Utah has remarkable geologic beauty in the southern regions of the state. There are also vast stretches of road with few or no services  between towns. This is a rugged land that requires a plan. My plan is to get back to the canyons when the temperature is a little cooler and the weather not so precarious.

 

Brokeass Mountain Road Trip, July 2011

Monterey, California – Denver, Colorado

• Yosemite’s Tioga Pass Road across the Sierra Nevada Mountains
• Westin Monache Resort Mammoth for year round vacations
• Even Lonelier than the Loneliest Road in America
• Earth’s Oldest Trees in Great Basin National Park Nevada
• Less extreme than 127 Hours in Utah
• Brokeass Mountain Tour eastbound – Hotel Value at High Elevation
• Brokeass Mountain Tour visits Starwood in Denver
• Driving by the 14ers South Park to Aspen, Colorado
• Top of the Rockies on the High Road to Aspen – Independence Pass 12,095 feet.
• St. Regis Aspen – Too Late to Cancel
• Aspen, Colorado to Park City, Utah: Ghost lands of Buffalo Soldiers, Utes and Dinosaurs
• The California Trail across Nevada
• Homeward Bound – Carson Pass Highway 88 over the Sierra Nevada to Monterey

 

Hyatt Gold Passport offers Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards members 1,800 points per Hyatt stay worldwide from October 1 to January 15, 2012. This is triple points compared to the normal earning rate of 600 Rapid Rewards points per stay. A maximum 10 hotel stays may earn triple Rapid Rewards points for 18,000 Rapid Rewards points.

The value of 1,800 Rapid Rewards points has a set $30 value (60 points = $1) when redeemed for Southwest Airlines Wanna Getaway fares.

Hyatt Promotion Registration Required

Hyatt Gold Passport Triple Rapid Rewards points with Southwest Airlines registration page. You may also register by calling 1-800-30-HYATT (provide promotion code WN002).

How to Request Miles from Hyatt Gold Passport

Hyatt Gold Passport does not have a way to change your earning preference to airline miles instead of Hyatt points through online account preferences. Gold Passport members need to request Southwest Rapid Rewards points (or any airline miles) at check-in and provide your frequent flyer number rather than earn the normal 5 Gold Passport points per dollar. Even when you request miles at the hotel there is the likelihood your account will post Gold Passport points instead of miles.

Don’t panic if you earn Hyatt points instead of Southwest points (miles) when your hotel stay posts. This is common for miles earners. A call to Hyatt Gold Passport customer service can easily get the Gold Passport points changed to Southwest Rapid Rewards points.

Loyalty Traveler Analysis

Triple points with Southwest Airlines promotion can be combined with the 5,000 Gold Passport points every three nights promotion that runs concurrently through November 15, 2011. The ability to combine the 5K per 3 nights with airline promotions was confirmed by Gold Passport Representative, Hyatt’s company concierge on FlyerTalk.

Hyatt Gold Passport points are typically worth $20 per 1,000 points.

The combination of 1,667 Gold Passport points per night and 1,800 points per stay can be a rebate value around $190 after three one-night Hyatt stays between October 1 – November 15 when both of these offers are in effect.

Hyatt Gold Passport offers good value hotel rebates for frequent guests this fall 2011.